How He Gonna Get His Money

Down in the ghetto, a young Black man breaks into a home and is shot and killed. A member of his family angrily responds "How he supposed to get his money?" The implication being, that if he isn’t robbing and committing crimes, he’ll go hungry. “What else do you expect?” Seems to be her implied response.

Now, I am old enough to remember life in the ghetto before the civil rights movement was barely out of the gate. And no one, I mean no one living in the projects and in tenement house back then, when racism was far more prevalent than anything we see today, would've said, "How he supposed to get his money?" Not after the kid was killed trying to commit a robbery—and certainly not said in public or on television.

A half-century later, after literally tens of trillions of dollars have been spent on poverty programs and other programs designed to level an uneven playing field, this new ghetto-ethic has increasingly become the norm. Some version of it is on display nightly in the media as a brother or son with a police record as long as a Greek menu gets killed committing a crime.

By comparison, two-parent families were the norm 50 years ago in the African American community, in spite of it being much closer in time to slavery and Jim Crow. Unlike today, when nearly three quarters of all African Americans are born into homes with no father present. As the result of unified families, the vagaries of racism were mediated somewhat by normal family structures. About that, no one should be surprised. But today, people respond as if there was no historical record to rely upon. That’s because one story alone has been told over and over, by the media, by filmmakers and civil rights activists, who see the government as the sole solution to every problem. And racism, and racism alone, as the only allowable answer to any question regarding dysfunctional minority behavior.

Let me make a simple suggestion, do the research. In fact, I dare anyone to look at the actual data, not as it's filtered through the media, but the real data for children—In particular boys—growing up in a home with no father present, and it is uniquely horrific, across the board. But the Left continues to blame racism, as though there was no other possible answer. Is anybody really arguing that racism is worse today than it was then? Remarkably, they are.

In reality, social scientists have understood the relationship between poverty, crime and just about every other social pathology as they relate to illegitimacy, for at least 50 years, and probably as far back as the oldest civilizations, which is why illegitimacy has been discouraged throughout history. There is no program, however, to keep families together. Only those that tear them apart by creating perverse incentives towards family creation. Take that away, though, and the political Left loses their strongest and most dependent base. If they have to keep Black folk in chains of a different kind, well, that’s the price progressives are willing to extract in order to maintain power.

In the end, there is only one way this can play itself out if the Left isn’t stopped, and that is a racial divide so deep that it will spread throughout the culture, separating Black, Brown and Beige people, and every shade in between. It is a time bomb planted in society, and all for short term gain. Both political sides may be guilty, but the Left in particular, are the provocateurs that stand to gain the most. Follow the money trail and you’ll see what I mean. Racism is simply one more big business, offering a pathway to power for race hustlers and other charlatans, which is why it is carefully stoked and kept alive. It’s just too lucrative to let go. And that is why racism will never be left to heal. There’s too much power and wealth at stake to let it rest in peace.